Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
00:50:00 · Brian Halligan, Chase Lochmiller
[00:50:00] S1: Do you have methods to encourage that to make sure people will stand up to you? Because the 2,000 person you hire, they put you on a pedestal. The twentieth person's beating you up day to day. [00:50:11] S0: Yeah. I mean, honestly, it's it's it's like mining for it, just asking for it relentlessly. I think when people see examples of you taking criticism and feedback, responding to it, changing your mind, I think it empowers people to be like, Oh, actually, my voice should... You know, I should voice my concern. And, you know, like, I think people often have this perspective that you as the leader, you as the CEO, you wanna... Only wanna hear the good news. Generally, like, the good news is great. Like, I wanna hear it. But, like, I care way less about the good news than I do about the bad news. So, like, trying to run into those, like, What's going wrong? What are we bad at? How do we fix these things? What are the problems? How do I go resolve those? I think that is a critical characteristic of a CEO, that willingness to go seek out and like run into the burning buildings, figure out the problems, and, you know, go try to, you know, help resolve them. [00:51:08] S1: Okay. This question's for me, and I would imagine other people are interested in. I've never met someone that climbed Mount Everest, and I'm really impressed. What is it like? What is the training like? What does it feel like when you get to the top of that mountain?
00:51:28 · Chase Lochmiller
[00:51:28] S0: You know, in a lot of ways, like, a company culture is sort of a reflection of, you know, the CEO or the founder's culture. And, you know, that's really what's happened at Crusoe. Like, we we actually have a core company value to think like a mountaineer, which is like this sense of cultural resilience and preparation and planning and, you know, willingness to endure the expedition. A lot of that value and the practices that we've written about for that value describe a lot of what it's like to climb Mount Everest. And and so, you know, there's actually this whole internal presentation I have around, you know, the various Everest trips that I had because I actually tried to climb Mount Everest once in 2014, and there was a big avalanche that occurred. And it it ended up killing 15 sherpas in the Khumbu Icefall. And, you know, I made sort of this conscious decision. Like, you know, I came back, and my wife was like, oh, thank god. Like, that chapter's done and, like, you don't have to do this anymore. And I was like, look. This thing, like, haunts me, and, like, it's all I think about. And, like, I, like, have to go back. She's like, you're insane. But, like, if you're gonna do that, please do it before we have kids. So... But when I thought about that, it was, like, very much like when you think about Mount Everest, you know... And and I climbed on the south side, which is, you know, the Nepal side, through the Khumbu Valley. There's this... You know, you you basically start at base camp and then... Or you trek up to base camp, and then you go from base camp to camp one, and then there's camp two, Camp 3, Camp 4, and then you you have this push to the summit. Well, the two most dangerous areas on the mountain are basically from Camp 4 to the summit, which is which is frequently referred to as the Death Zone. This is where you're above 8,000 meters. So, you know, very intuitive why that's dangerous. You're at very, very high altitude where humans really shouldn't be living. But the other most dangerous area is this area between base camp and Camp 1, which is called the Khumbu Icefall. So this was the area where, you know, this disaster occurred when I was there in 2014. And the thing about the Khumbu Icefall is that it's a glacier that's sort of falling. Right? So it's this beautiful, really cool ice jungle gym.
00:53:38 · Chase Lochmiller
But there's a lot of things that are just stochastic risk. Right? It's like these things that are totally outside of your control, where it's like a Ciroc falls or an avalanche occurs and, you know, oops, you die. And that was the type of risk where I was like, look, I know there are ways I can consciously train and prepare for the high elevation, and, you know, I can manage my risk up there, like, more effectively, and I know consciously I'm taking that risk. The risk I felt less comfortable with was this stochastic risk. And a traditional Everest expedition involves going from base camp to camp one, and you're... You actually acclimatize on the mountains. You go base camp camp one, back to base camp. Base camp camp one, camp two, back to base camp. Up to camp three, back to base camp. And you actually end up doing eight trips through the Khumbu Icefall, so like four round trips on a typical commercially guided expedition. In order to derisk that, me and my climbing partner actually designed a different approach to climbing Everest, which was we ended up going and climbing a bunch of mountains nearby and spending a lot of time at the summits of those mountains so that we would acclimatize without taking this stochastic risk in the Khumbu Icefall. And we actually only did one big acclimatization trip up Mount Everest and then back to base camp. So we ended up doing basically four passes through the Khumbu Icefall instead of eight. I was conscious of the risks that I wanted to take. The planning, preparation, you know, all that, you know, we had to think through a ton of stuff, a lot of training, a lot of long distance trail running, and, you know, a couple of different, like, high altitude training trips. But, you know, the point I want to get across is, like, conscious risk taking and intense planning and preparation that really went into a very successful Everest summit in 2018.
00:55:25 · Brian Halligan
[00:55:25] S1: You worked so hard at it, and you wanted it so badly. What was the feeling inside of you when you got to the top?
00:55:30 · Chase Lochmiller
[00:55:30] S0: It was like... Because I almost turned around at this area called the balcony. It's about 8,600 meters. So the summit's 80 eightforty eight. And so not too far from the summit in terms of elevation, but it felt impossibly far, and it was still dark out, right? So we left Camp 4 at like 11PM. It was still dark out when we got to the balcony. My, you know, you feel terrible. Like, you know, I hadn't eaten much in the last forty eight hours. Like, I was dehydrated. I felt awful. My legs were cramping. Like... And it was dark, right? And, you know, my partner was really the person who inspired me to continue. I I... Like, I felt fine apart from those things. So it wasn't like... Felt like I was putting myself at risk. And once once the sun came up and you start seeing the sunrise and you're you're sort of high up in this mountain, you're like... You're just inspired by, you know, your surroundings. It was this elevation of your spirits and gave you the adrenaline to kind of make the push through that final two fifty meters. And when I got to the summit, I think my feeling was really one of just sheer awe, just a sense of awe for the universe and an awe for being on the summit and sort of experiencing the whole world around me, I think was just a really special one. And it makes you feel small, right? And I think there's something very interesting about having that sense of, I'm small and I'm inspired by the world around me and just the magnificence of existence. And that was kind of my experience on the summit. It was beautiful. We had a very sunny day, so we spent about an hour up at the summit and just took a bunch of pictures, just really enjoyed this heroic moment of achievement.
00:57:36 · Brian Halligan, Chase Lochmiller
[00:57:36] S1: Congratulations on all your success. I'm rooting for you. You're a fantastic CEO. Thanks for coming on. [00:57:43] S0: Brian, thanks for having me. This was really fun.